


Hapi Going North

by LayALioness



Series: Stories of Mine (myths, re-imagined) [5]
Category: Ancient Egyptian Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 21:45:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5307983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hapi's father dies, and he runs away to the Arctic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hapi Going North

Hapi is the oldest of his brothers. His father called him the  _cardinal_ , the  _true north_ , the _great runner_. His father called him  _favorite_ , the way he should have said his name. His father called him  _piece of me_ , the way he should have said  _my son_. His father called him a lot of things, and he always sounded like he meant something else when he said them.

And then his father died, and Hapi proved him right, in the end. He was definitely a runner.

He climbs out his bedroom window, though he could easily take the stairs. His brothers are all asleep, or maybe they’re camped under sheets, on their phones–either way, they don’t hear him. The Aunts are all downstairs, in the screened-in porch, bickering over what to do with the house, with the things, with the boys. His father had left a lot behind when he died, but no Last Will and Testament, no directions on how to go on. He probably hadn’t planned on dying, in the first place.

Hapi has a compass, beaten by age, but still good, given to him by his father. His father gave him many things--brown hair and skin, thick eyelashes, an affinity for words larger than him--but the compass is by far the most useful, the most tangible, solid and warm in his hands. He buys a fisherman’s boat with the bonds he’s been saving for college, and he sets off in the general direction of  _north_. He’s never spent much time on his own, before–there was always at least one of his brothers, or his father lurking in the background, waiting to see how his legacies played out. There were always the cows, low and soothing in the hay fields, and the cats in the loft, and the sows in their pen. There were always the Aunts, and all of their cousins, a million family reunions that bloomed in that house.

Hapi is alone for the first time he can remember. He doesn’t mind it much, being alone, being self-contained, with his thoughts and the cold and the water. But he could do without the loneliness. He could do without the wondering, about his brothers, the house, the things, the Aunts. How the cows are doing, if they’re cold. If any of the cats have had their litters. 

He could do without the grief, smaller than it probably should be, and the relief at the thought that, with his father gone and no longer a constant shadow, he can finally learn how to be himself.

He could do without the guilt that comes with it.

He could do with more sun--or, at least, a different sun. Here, the light is soft but blinding, ricocheted off the ice rocks and see-through ocean crest, making tears stream from his eyes until he thinks he'll run dry. He never does; there's always more, it seems. 

He thinks about the sun back home, the one that he grew up with. Golden and lazy, like fingers running down his arms, gentle and warm. Everything about his home was gentle and warm--the fields of winter wheat and golden wheat, baked brown in the summer; the green, green grass in spring that flaked brown the rest of the year. Everything was brown, back then, the fields, the cats, the grass, the trees, his brothers. Hapi and his brothers used to climb into the hay loft and lay parallel, four in a row, letting their feet dangle over the edge, dipping to some aimless beat that drummed away in their chests, somehow in sync though they never hummed it. They never gave it voice. 

He remembers running with them through the mazes, of wheat and hay and corn, leaping and bounding and hollering like wild things, until they just collapsed where they stood, lungs sharp as needles against their rib cages, like they were trying to escape. He remembers thinking they were  _princes_ , just like their father always said. Princes of the summer winds and summer sun and summer grass, dried and brittle in their fingers. They were always coated in it, like dust, ashen freckles on their cheekbones, scattering each time they blinked.

He thought they were princes, with the barn as a castle, firm and resolute and constant, like the sun, like summer, like their father was.

He thought they were little almost-kings, just waiting for their father to take the crown off his head and pass it around the circle, like he did when they were little, first learning how to share.

Hapi thought a lot of things that seem foolish, now. His mind was a fairy tale, flimsy and romantic and easily proved wrong. And now his thoughts circle those memories like vultures, biting at the flesh. Soon there won't be anything left except bones, cracked and empty.

Hapi reaches the Arctic, and falls asleep staring at the Northern Lights until his eyes burn from the wind. In the morning he squints at the sun-blinding snow, and breathes frigid air deep inside him, until the ice splinters get caught in his lungs. He wonders if they’ll puncture, if he’ll bleed out. The only blot of color on this glacier. Becoming his own small mark on this world.

Hapi stays until he can’t feel his fingers, and his lips fade to blue. He stays until he feels nothing but winter, until the air hurts to breathe, until each time he blinks he sees the Aurora Borealis tattooed across his eyelids. 

And then he pulls out his weathered old compass, and points the rudder back home.


End file.
